California State Legislators Ready to Raise Taxes for Single-Payer Health

By Katy Grimes

California legislators want to amend the state constitution to enact significant tax increases to fund a universal single-payer health care system.

On January 5, Assembly Members Ash Kalra and Alex Lee introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 11. Two-thirds of each chamber of the Legislature would have to approve the bill, which would then be placed on the November ballot for voters to consider.

On January 6, the Assembly Rules Committee passed Assembly Bill 1400 to create a state-run health care system.

Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo), the Vice Chairman of the Assembly Rules Committee, strongly objected to passing AB 1400 out of Rules for several reasons, but primarily because the “Guaranteed Health Care for All” bill still has no details on how it will be funded.

“We’ve got a state that can’t issue drivers licenses effectively through the DMV, and we’ve got a state that can’t issue unemployment checks properly through the EDD, but we’re going to make all of that (health care) a state agency and it’s going to control every aspect of your health care,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham said for the five-plus years he has been on the Assembly Rules Committee, “all bills without specified funding are held in the Rules Committee and not referred on to policy committees, unless and until how they will pay for themselves” is written into the bill and analyzed by the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

“I don’t know why we are diverting from that practice today,” said Cunningham. “This bill, AB 1400, does not tell you how it will pay for what would be the largest state bureaucracy in state history… and what will replace every piece of federal, state, and private healthcare systems with something run by 9 people.”

Tricky Financing

There are at least two committees that should review the bill, says Cunningham, the Revenue and Taxation Committee and the Business and Professions Committee, “since it would put an enormous number of people out of work, or put them to work in a very different manner than they work today.”

Cunningham called for the bill to be analyzed by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, “who are very well-suited to do an analysis, objectively and independently, and come up with numbers that we can all trust.”

Rules Committee Chairman Ken Cooley (D-Sacramento) gave no detailed explanation for why he wanted to single-refer the bill to the Health Committee without clear funding mechanisms and cost estimates, making it clear that this was a done-deal before the hearing.

That they substituted four quarantined committee members with last-minute alternates, one of which was Assemblyman Jim Wood (D-Santa Rosa), the Chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, also raised eyebrows.

Wood tweeted about AB 1400 immediately after the committee vote with a prepared press statement.

“This is one of the absolute worst pieces of legislation I’ve seen since being elected to office,” Assemblyman Health Flora (R-Ripon) told the Globe after the hearing. Flora is also on the Assembly Rules Committee.

“ACA 11 is the funding source to AB 1400. When they realize they don’t have enough money to pay for this, they can raise taxes on everyone on a simple majority vote. They wrote that right into the bill. But anything fiscal has to be a 2/3 majority vote,” said Flora.

Katy Grimes (katy@californiaglobe.com) is the editor of the California Globe. A version of this article was published by California Globe on January 6, 2022.  Reprinted with permission.